Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet. (Want to conveniently receive MoneyCall via email on Wednesday mornings? Subscribe here.)Name-dropped today: Roger Goodell, Ben Shelton and Carlos Alcaraz, Tony Romo, Steve Ballmer and Gillian Zucker (and Pablo Torre), Mike Tomlin, Bill Ackman, Cathy Engelbert, LeBron and more. I’m your host, Dan Shanoff. Let’s go:Driving the ConversationReturn of the sports kingI look at new NFL seasons for the ways the league picks its spots to flex its power.A couple years ago, it was, “You think the NBA ‘owns’ Christmas? We’ll put the Cowboys and Beyoncé on Netflix.”Last season, it was a Week 1 game airing free and universally accessible on YouTube, a shot across the bow for traditional TV partners thinking they had much leverage.This season? I spot a few ways:🗓️ Unprecedented expansion into Wednesdays: We saw the league playing a regular-season game on a Wednesday for only the fifth time since 1948 (and the first time since then by choice, if you remove Christmas on a Wednesday in 2024, COVID-related rescheduling in 2020 and to avoid a conflict with the Democratic National Convention in 2012, which is quaint to imagine today).We’ve also got the league extending its traditional Thanksgiving Thursday dominance to the night before: “Thanksgiving Eve.” The only day of the week without an NFL game this season: Tuesdays.🐨 Australia and other new international markets: The league will play a record nine games internationally across seven countries, including first-time NFL regular-season games played in Australia (on Thursday night) and Paris. (Great read on the Rams’ and 49ers VERY different travel strategies here.)💪 Roger Goodell in control for at least four more years: There is no 22nd Amendment in the NFL. The 67-year-old commissioner has presided over hockey-stick revenue growth and, to the point of this entire argument, the expansion of the NFL’s influence as the most dominant force in American culture.Goodell’s biggest goals/challenges over his next (last?) four years? Navigating the upcoming negotiation around TV deals and leading the league into its flag-focused future that will help secure additional decades of hegemony.(Meanwhile, I had my two-decade fantasy league draft Tuesday, co-managing as always with my kid, who is spending the college semester abroad in Amsterdam, so we connected on WhatsApp at 3 a.m. his time to do the draft together. Clearly, his personal international ambition mirrors the league’s. My colleagues’ fantasy analysis is indispensable.)Get Caught UpBig talkers from the sports business industry:That Shelton-Alcaraz U.S. Open match … and 3:33 a.m. ending: Time for another round of “two things can be true”…(1) One of the greatest matches in U.S. Open history. “Sure, there were rackets and balls and deuces and ads, but those were mere details,” Matt Futterman wrote. This was a heavyweight prize fight between two of the biggest stars in the sport.”(2) It is near-malpractice that it started so late and ended so late, robbing countless fans — avid tennis nuts and casuals who would have tuned in and been enthralled — from seeing it. I’m all for “late night at the Open is so cool!” However: This was absurd.(During sensible hours when we were all more likely to tune in, Frances Tiafoe and Alex Michelson also produced an awesome match, and an indelible post-match moment.)Keep reading to the bottom for an incredible U.S. Open read on courtside gambling.That Michigan mishegas: A lot of people were pretty good with “that definitely felt wrong, but I guess it was technically correct?” … until the MAC appealed the result to the NCAA, arguing, “Actually, it was technically incorrect.”